One of my current coworkers went to Duke and is a self-proclaimed die-hard Duke fan. He’s always talking about Duke, which is obnoxious (but really, is there any other kind of Duke fan?) So naturally I turned to him to inquire about our office’s March Madness pool.

Turns out our office has never had a March Madness pool before. Weird. But just another reminder that I’m back in the regular world where people don’t do this with their corn fields.

But Duke Fan was like, “THIS IS A GREAT IDEA! If you set it up I’ll put up the $$ for the prize, so there doesn’t have to be a buy in.”

Awesome. So I set up our office pool. Because this:

Kentucky’s been crushing it this year. CRUSHING IT. They are poised to be the first team to go through an entire season, including the tournament, undefeated since something like 1796. Or maybe 1976.

And Duke. I was only in Kentucky for four years, but if there is one thing that I fully bought into it’s that Duke is horrible. So this was going to be awesome.

Anyway, very few people here know or care about this. Except my husband.

That’s been hanging outside our house all month.

So I set up the pool and sent out the invite, and was immediately contacted by half of the people in our office asking how this works and letting me know they’d never done one of these before (again, weird), but that this was great, thank you!

So last week going into the Sweet 16 I went to check on the standings, and in addition to seeing that I was second to last (what else is new) I noticed that Duke Fan, the same Duke Fan that was TOTALLY into doing the pool, who can’t stop talking about how Duke is better than everyone, had picked Kentucky OVER Duke IN THE FINAL GAME.

I didn’t even know how to respond. I am not exaggerating when I say Paul would probably cut off his right leg before he EVER chose Duke to over Kentucky. EVER. In ANY game.

Paul’s response: “That is so typical of a Duke fan.”

I’m not even serious basketball fan, but the world feels very confusing right now. This is a whole new kind of madness.

University of Kentucky cheerleaders in action during the 1958 NCAA championship games at Freedom Hall in Louisville. March 21, 1958 Photo by Al Blunk, The Courier-Journal.

This might be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. My boss, fellow Masters swim coach, and personal hero Susan Bradley-Cox, second from the left. Front page of the Courier-Journal this morning. She said the skirts went down to your ankles and were made out of wool.

Go ahead and add the Spring Game to chicken livers, mudding, frog giggin, and everything else on the growing list of Things In Kentucky That Don’t Make Sense To Me.

This Saturday was the Spring Game, or the football team’s first intramural scrimmage of the year. This is how it works: people start tailgaiting around 9am. Then, at 7pm, 50,000 people file into the stadium to watch UK play…itself. And when there is a first down, or a touchdown, everyone cheers. Even though we are also defense, and just got scored on.

It makes no sense to me at all. And every time someone dropped a pass, everyone was like, “Whelp, good thing they’ve got another 7 months of practice before the first game.”

Whatever. I guess the life lesson here is: never turn down an opportunity to tailgate.

You may have noticed a certain topic that kind of dominated this blog last spring has been conspicuously absent this year (see: here, here, here…)

Kentucky got off to kind of a rough start this year, but by mid-season had really started to pull themselves together and play like rockstars. Then, in one unfortunate incident, things came crashing down.

Because about a month ago, Nerlens…

(this Nerlens, not

that Nerlens)…did this:

I know, that is so gross, I almost didn’t post it. But for those of you out there who are unfamiliar with basic human anatomy, he really messed up his knee. Tore his ACL. And at the same time, the soul of Kentucky. Right in half.

I love the camera man’s face in that picture.

And last week, it was finalized. Kentucky didn’t even make the tournament this year.

(I have no idea where that picture came from).

And so, while UK sits in mourning, and Louisville continues onto the tourney as the #1 overall seed (which is absolutely KILLING Paul), and the people of Lexington drown their sorrows in bourbon, talk of next year’s recruiting classes for both basketball AND football (?!?) is already flitting through the air giving the Wildcat Nation a thread of hope to cling to in this time of dire straits.

I walked by Anthony Davis in his car the other day while he was stopped at a red light.

The only reason I saw him because this (maybe) homeless (probably) drunk guy next to me on the sidewalk wearing a UK hat was screaming, “AINTHONY! AINTHONY!! AAAAAIIIIN-THON-YYYYY!!!!” into the street, while his also potentially homeless, definitely toothless girlfriend standing next to him on the sidewalk kept yelling back “HE CAIN’T HEAR YOU!”

Anthony Davis really couldn’t hear him because he was bompin to some jam in his car. So the dude walked up to AD’s car window, which was rolled down, tapped him on the shoulder (which scared the crap out of AD) and was like, “HEY AINTHONY! LIKE MAH HAT?”

Anthony Davis was like, what the s**t, then the light turned green and he drove away.

Now that basketball season has come to a victorious close, Lexington is settling back into normality…which means no more wearing Kentucky hoodies to work (dammit).

With all the basketball hoopla (pun intended) dominating everything, what else has gone on?

Well, 2 weeks ago I got food poisoning that almost killed me. I couldn’t move for 2 days, and the morning I finally did make it out of the house a bird took a massive s**t on my head and new shoes. So that week sucked.

Paul took a break from stressing about boards to bottle his beer…which makes him so happy.

We are storing the bottles in the closet in our guest room for the 2 remaining weeks until it’s drinkable. I made the mistake of opening the closet door the other day and Paul FLIPPED about exposing the bottles to light. So if you come visit, don’t do that.

Training picked up a lot for me the week after I was sick (Hawaii is less than 2 months away…), which has been great but tiring. I’ve also been running really slowly lately, which is rough. Not sure why. But, plodding on…

Oh, and I baked a cake for the Louisville game.

Strawberries on the inside, blueberries on top (because blue dominates red, of course.) It was ugly but delicious. I more or less ate the whole thing in a single go (might have something to do with my slower runs.)